Desert Vampire

She lives in the evening tide. Dusk is her dawn, the desert her sea, the moon her sun.

She exists on the frontier of civilization, never daring to enter those behemoths which glimmer on the horizon. She prowls along the veins which trickle down into those beating hearts and takes what blood she can.

She is resigned to a solitary existence. Her curse is neither graceful nor grandeur as the ragged books she finds dictate.

She is a scavenger preying on the weak and lost. A nocturnal animal manufactured from the untold crevices of a midnight wilderness. As the fox tears open a hare, as the rattlesnake sinks curved fangs into small flesh, she too kills a human. These animals understand her, they are her brethren.

Civilization would class her as a pest to be put down if they knew of her reality.

She takes the lost who roam the highways during the day, seeking shelter under twenty dollar a night walls or roadside diners. These locations are her hunting ground, Oasis' marked by beacons of flickering neon and liver colored lights. Her victims are always adrift, barely anchored to the perplexing throng of life. For a moment in time they connect and she understands. They will be a casualty of both life and death.

She kills them in silence and serves no pain, then drinks. Blood is like nectar she thinks, flesh like the soft fruit she remembers from a bygone era. Insects are quick to drink and crawl across the syrup. She swipes them away out of respect, and closes the lifeless eyes that stare at the constellations like an abandoned porcelain doll.

She ferries the remains into the night, away from the gaze of gas stations and hotels. Her burial ground is marked by a knot of misshapen cacti that only sprout strange hued flowers beneath a dark moon. Her garden born from the lost souls beneath.

She turns coins and lockets, etched rings and blood streaked ID's and name tags, crumpled photos all over in her hands. Holds the belongings up to the lost hours that start to creep along the horizon. She pockets the money and travels back to a hotel, using the shadows to hide the debris of a kill on her skin and clothes.

For the next few weeks she learns of her victims from the news. Of the people mourning them states away, countries away. She envies them in those moments, but she can't change her life. She is a wild animal after all, and a domesticated creature will always harbor its wild instinct no matter how loving its enclosure. She fears death above all, but has no capacity to live.